2012 PISA Results Highlight Inequities, International Lessons
Today, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released results from the 2012 administration of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide study of 15-year-old students’ performance on mathematics, science, and reading. American students’ performance remained largely unchanged from the previous PISA administration in 2009, although the U.S. ranking declined relative to other countries that improved over the past 3 years.
AACTE signed on to a statement of the Learning First Alliance about the results and also issued its own call for policy makers to look closely at the test’s lessons, along with the recommendations made by the OECD in its report Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons From PISA 2012 for the United States as well as in the 2011 edition of the report, which focuses more on teacher preparation.
In particular, AACTE highlighted three points:
- Educational inequality is a serious problem in the United States.
- There is no “silver bullet” for improving teacher quality or teacher preparation.
- High-performing nations invest in teacher quality both during and after initial preparation.
AACTE’s statement also calls attention to the new edTPA support and assessment system and to the federal Teacher Quality Partnership grant program as examples of positive influences on U.S. teacher quality.
“The teacher preparation profession continues to dedicate significant resources to implementing successful practices of competitive nations,” said AACTE President/CEO Sharon P. Robinson. “We now need national and state policy makers to put forth an agenda that supports the expansion of these efforts.”
Tags: assessment, global issues, research
